Mini-review: Negro Swan - Blood Orange

Negro Swan

Artist: Blood Orange

Label: Domino Recording Company

Top Tracks: Saint; Jewelry; Charcoal Baby; Minetta Creek

For Fans Of: Solange; Moses Sumney; Frank Ocean

49 minutes

On his last album, Freetown Sound, Blood Orange founded a formula to his sound that he clearly has a natural inclination towards. Accordingly, he uses the same style on Negro Swan, now focusing in on black depression and isolation. The style is hard to describe: it’s a unique, delicate, instrumentation-guided montage of sounds, samples, refrains and references that seeks to collate vibes, leaving the listener with a narrative experience as nuanced, honest and deliberate as a long diary entry. Which is ironic because, especially on this album, we don’t get many direct, divulging verses. Yet you never find yourself lost.